Nurturing regulatory compliance: Is procedural justice effective when people question the legitimacy of the law?

Procedural justice generally enhances an authority's legitimacy and encourages people to comply with an authority's decisions and rules. We argue, however, that previous research on procedural justice and legitimacy has examined legitimacy in a limited way by focusing solely on the perceived legitimacy of authorities and ignoring how people may perceive the legitimacy of the laws and rules they enforce. In addition, no research to date has examined how such perceptions of legitimacy may moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance behavior. Using survey data collected across three different regulatory contexts – taxation (Study 1), social security (Study 2), and law enforcement (Study 3) – the findings suggest that one's perceptions of the legitimacy of the law moderates the effect of procedural justice on compliance behaviors; procedural justice is more important for shaping compliance behaviors when people question the legitimacy of the laws than when they accept them as legitimate. An explanation of these findings using a social distancing framework is offered, along with a discussion of the implications the findings have on enforcement.

Justice, gender and employee cognitive outcomes

This study used the four factor model of organizational justice to investigate gender differences in the employee outcome cognitive variables of job satisfaction,commitment and turnover intentions. Survey respondents were 301 male and 147 female currently working employees in a variety of occupations. Structural equation modeling was used for the analyses. There were significant relationships from distributive justice to job satisfaction and commitment for both men and women. Informational justice significantly predicted job satisfaction. For women, informational justice predicted commitment and turnover intentions. Procedural justice predicted turnover intentions and interpersonal justice predicted commitment for men. Gender differences were found for procedural, interpersonal and informational justices. Men and women gave differing responses to justice perceptions, implying consideration of a range of views when allocation decisions are made and communicated. For both genders, distributive and informational justices play a central role in predicting employee outcomes, although the other justice types also have an effect for males. Justice had a diffuse effect for males, but not females.

The recruitment and retention of Indigenous criminal justice agency staff in an Australian state

In Australia, as in other countries that have experienced colonisation, indigenous people are massively overrepresented in all stages of the criminal justice system. If criminal justice agencies are to provide culturally responsive and effective services to this group, it is important that they employ significant numbers of indigenous staff across all levels of their organisations. Despite the positive intentions of many justice agencies to increase the proportion of indigenous staff members they employ, the numbers remain low. In this article, we explore some of the possible reasons for this by reporting the results of focus groups conducted with existing indigenous justice agency employees. The employees raised a number of issues relevant to recruitment and retention. These are discussed in terms of their potential value in improving justice agency indigenous recruitment and retention strategies.

Procedural justice and tax compliance

Throughout the 1990s, tens of thousands of Australian taxpayers invested in mass-marketed tax effective schemes. They enjoyed generous tax breaks until the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) told them in 1998 that they abused the system. This study examines the circumstances surrounding taxpayers' decision to invest in scheme arrangements. It also explores investors' perceptions of the way the ATO handled the schemes issue and, perhaps more importantly, why such a large number of investors defied the ATO's demands that they pay back taxes. Data were taken from in-depth interviews conducted with 29 scheme investors. Consistent with the procedural justice literature, the findings revealed that many of the scheme investors interviewed defied the ATO's demands because the procedures the ATO used to handle the situation were perceived to be unfair. Given these findings, it will be argued that to effectively shape desired behaviour, regulators will need to move beyond enforcement strategies linked purely to deterrence. A strategy that aims to emphasise the procedural justice aspects of a regulatory encounter will be discussed.